As a business owner, it is important that you use social media to connect and stay in touch with customers and prospects in your local area. Social media by its very nature is a powerful communication medium, but you must use it correctly in order to generate more leads and sales.

Here are a few tips to help you accomplish this critical goal:

1. Go Where Your Audience Is

There are dozens of different popular social media websites out there on the web. However, when you’re first starting out, it’s not a good idea to jump and try to master and maintain all of them.

Instead, you should focus only on the one or two main sites that your audience congregates on. So do a little research and find out where your customers and potential customers are spending the most time.

As a general rule of thumb, nearly everyone is on Facebook so that’s a great place to start. However, you should also consider other sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and others. Depending on the nature of your business, these other sites can add significant value to your marketing efforts.

2. Post Often and Consistently

Businesses that post content often and consistently tend to generate better results from social media than businesses that post every now and then. Social media is all about engagement, and regular posting will ensure your business makes often appearances in the timelines of your audience. The more often your content appears there, the more likely it is they will pay attention to your communications.

So it is best to establish an effective posting schedule that works for you. Whether you want to post once, twice, or three times or more per day, get on that schedule and stick to it for the best results.

3. Mix Promotions with Helpful Content

You may be thinking that the most effective way to market on social media is to always promote your products and services. The problem is… this approach does not work very well. Instead, it could turn your followers off and cause them to stop associating with you all together.

So it is best to alternate between promotions/advertisements and valuable content that is relevant and helpful to your audience.

This can be as simple as providing links to news stories, articles, blog posts, videos, audio recordings, and any other type of content that is related to your business. Some people will tell you that you need to do at least a 50-50 mix of promotions with content, but experiment with different ratios to see what works well for your business.